The present invention relates to a hinge for furniture leaves that open downwardly. More specifically, the invention relates to a hinge for leaves that open downwardly about at least one horizontal axis.
As is known, in the furniture sector there are many items of furniture that have leaves that open downwardly by way of an oscillating motion about at least one horizontal axis.
Such leaves are in particular connected to a back wall of a fixed body of the piece of furniture by way of hinges that are designed to enable the leaves to perform this oscillating motion.
The hinges that are most commonly used in such types of furniture comprise a fixed part, which can be anchored to the back wall of the piece of furniture, and a moveable part, which can be fixed to the leaf. The fixed part and the moveable part are mutually connected so as to oscillate by way of an articulation system that comprises two rockers and four articulation axes that form an articulated quadrilateral, and which is configured so that the open leaf lies substantially in the plane of the part of the piece of furniture with respect to which the leaf oscillates.
However, the hinges described above are not capable on their own of exerting sufficient support of the leaf in the fully open position, or of controlling the speed of movement of the opening of the leaf.
To support the open leaf, and also to control the opening movement of the leaf, support systems are usually provided which, such as for example disclosed in WO 2015/014814, are in the form of devices that are separate from and independent of the hinges and which comprise a body that can be connected to a lateral wall of the piece of furniture in a position that is spaced apart upwardly from the hinges, means of combined rotation and translation for winding a support cable being connectable to the leaf, and deceleration and/or elastic means which are functionally connected to the winding means in order to control the winding/unwinding of the cable and hence the speed of the opening movement of the leaf and in order to support such leaf in its final open position.
As an alternative to such devices the use is known of telescopic supporting rods that extend from a lateral wall of the piece of furniture and the leaf, which are provided with elastic means and/or deceleration means so as to define the extent and/or oscillation of the rods and so control in this case also the opening movement of the leaf and support the leaf in its final open position.
However, the above mentioned support devices clutter up the lateral walls of the piece of furniture and they involve additional mounting operations to fix the parts of the devices to the lateral walls and to the leaves of the piece of furniture.